What You Measure is What You Get.

Einstein :
Not everything that can be counted counts.
And not everything that counts can be counted.

About me.

I know enough to know that at 04.00am it gets dark out on the streets. It has done this for the last twenty odd years, to my knowledge and will probably continue for the forseeable future. At some stage in this ‘future’ I shall retire and probably won’t give a damn if it still gets dark at 04.00am. Until then I shall be out there, somewhere, lurking in the shadows because someone, somewhere will be doing stuff they shouldn’t and then, well then I will introduce myself. In the meanwhile I shall try to remain sane and remember why I joined in the first place and try to ignore all the people who piss me off by making the job more complicated than it should be.

Opinions

Any opinions contained in posts are mine and mine alone. Many of them will not be those of any Police Force, Police Organisation or Police Service around this country. The opinions are based on many years of working within the field of practical operational Police work and reflect the desire to do things with the minimum of interference by way of duplication for the benefit of others who themselves do not do the same job. I recognise that we all perform a wide range of roles and this is essential to make the system work. If you don’t like what you see remember you are only one click on the mouse away from leaving. I accept no responsibility for the comments left by others.

Recent Comments

C.T.C. Constabulary.

A Strategic Community Diversity Partnership.
We are cutting bureaucracy and reducing the recording of target and monitoring related statistics.
Our senior leaders will drive small, economical cars from our fleet surplus to save money to invest in better equipment for our frontline response officers.
We are investing money to reinstate station canteens for the benefits of those 24/7 response officers.
We have a pursuit policy. The message is that if you commit an offence and use a vehicle, we will follow you and stop you if necessary. It is your duty to stop when the lights and sirens are on.
We take account of the findings of the Force questionnaire and are reducing the administration and management levels and returning these officers to frontline response duties.
We insist on a work-life balance.
We have no political masters.
We are implimenting selection processes that take account of an individuals skills and proven abilities for the job. Our senior leaders will have one foot in reality and still possess the operational Policing skills they have long forgotton about and seldom used. All ranks are Police Officers first and specialists second.
We will impliment career development and performance evaluation monitoring of our leaders by those officers who operate under that leadership.
The most important role is that of Constable. All other roles are there to positively support the role and the responsibility of Constable and the duties performed.

Whichendbites

“We trained very hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising. It can be a wonderful method of creating the illusion of progress while creating confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.”......Petronius

Just so.

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

Reality.

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.

Rank V’s Responsibility

Don't confuse your idea of how important you are with the responsibility of your role.

Meetings.

If you had to identify, in one word, why we will never achieve our full potential, Meetings would be that word.

There is always a bigger picture.

When there is no answer to your problem, there is always deflection from the need to justify giving an answer.

I have been hearing from the various forms of National media, who report that the local authorities have no extra money for services for old people, closure of hospital wards, libraries, schools being merged to save money etc etc etc etc etc etc…………………..cuts, cuts, cuts. All the time more cutbacks, because they have no funds or have efficiency saving targets to hit.

So if they have no money and are continually making cut backs, no extra money for essential public services and ALWAYS have to make cuts in their funding for just about everything, how the bloody hell can they put millions of pounds away in foreign banks ?

Just where does all of those portfolios of investments come from ?

Is their priority to provide local public services or to put money away for a rainy day that will never come ?

I thought that there was always a budget deficit and there was no extra money to go around. Now, it seems that almost every local authority has managed to get several or even tens of millions of pounds spare to invest in foreign banks.

I must remember that the next time there is a council meeting to decide how much the council taxes will go up because they have no money in the coffers.

It is not just the local councils but also some Police Authorities seem to have got their hands on some spare cash to stash away, presumably no claims of budgetary savings there then.

God job then, at the CTCC we have a nw mattress at the training wing where we are able to hide away our budget underspend instead of sending it to a Icelandic financial institution. £21.68p at the last count. The Police Authority meetings will have to settle for ginger nuts to have with their coffee for a few weeks.

More than three quarters of a billion pounds of local authority money is at risk after over 85 councils and other public bodies deposited the cash in Icelandic banks.

Kent – £50 million (£15 million with Glitnir Bank, £17 million with Landsbanki and just over £18 million in its UK subsidiary, Heritable).

Transport for London (£40 million deposit with Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander).

Haringey (£37 million)

The Metropolitan Police Authority (£30 million. Its total budget is £3.5 billion).

Dorset County Council (£28.1 million in temporary loans to Landsbanki and Heritable)

Barnet (£27.4 million)

Northumberland County Council (£23 million).

Hillingdon (£20 million)

Westminster (£17 million)

Brent (£15 million)

Caerphilly County Borough Council (£15 million with Heritable and Landsbanki)

West Sussex County Council (£12.9 million).

Havering (£12.5 million)

Cheltenham Borough Council (£11 million)

Wakefield Council (£9 million)

Cheshire County Council (£8.5 million invested with Heritable, 4% of the council’s total £200 million investment with national and international financial institutions. The council has a budget of £1 billion)

Bassetlaw District Council in North Nottinghamshire (£8 million in Glitner, Heritable, Landsbanki and Singer Friedlander)

Bristol City Council (£8 million invested in Landsbanki)

Wiltshire County Council (£8 million with Heritable)

South Lanarkshire (£7.5 million with Landsbanki and Heritable)

Derwentside District Council (£7 million)

Dorset Police Authority (£7 million of temporary loans to Landsbanki and Heritable)

Redcar and Cleveland (£6 million)

Ceredigion County Council (£5.5 million)

North Lincolnshire Council (£5.5 million in Landsbanki and Heritable)

Sutton (£5.5 million)

Bromley (£5 million)

South Ayrshire (£5 million)

Cornwall County Council (£5 million invested with Landsbanki from total investments of £360 million)

Gateshead Council (£4.5 million).

Powys County Council (£4 million, about 6% of its cash investments, with two Icelandic banks – Landsbanki and Glitnir)

Gwynedd Council (£4 million deposited with Heritable).

Rotherham Borough Council (£3.7 million with Landsbanki and Heritable Bank)

Flintshire County Council, North Wales (£3.7 million invested with Landsbanki)

Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council (£3 million deposited with Heritable).

Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council (£3 million)

North Somerset Council (£3 million with Landsbanki)

Doncaster Council, in South Yorkshire (£3 million)

Stroud District Council (£3 million)

North East Lincolnshire Council (£2.5 million deposited with Landsbanki out of a total of £90 million of investments)

Cotswold District Council (£2 million)

Gloucester City Council (£2 million)

Moray Council (£2 million deposited with Landsbanki)

Monmouthshire County Council (£1.2 million with Heritable)

Tewkesbury Borough Council (£1 million)

Lewes District Council in East Sussex (£1 million deposited in Landsbanki)

Perth and Kinross Council (£1 million with Glitnir bank)

Nottingham City Council is also affected but has not yet disclosed the amount.

The BBC said these councils and bodies were also affected:

Hertfordshire (£28 million)

Somerset County Council (£25 million)

Plymouth City Council (£13 million)

Breckland Council (£12 million)

Gloucestershire County Council (£12 million)

Lancashire County Council (£10 million)

West Oxfordshire District Council (£9 million)

Wyre Forest District Council (£9 million)

Daventry District Council (£8 million)

Wiltshire County Council (£8 million)

South Lanarkshire Council (£7.5 million)

West Lindsey District Council (£7 million)

Cherwell District Council (£6.5 million)

Braintree District (£5 million)

Buckinghamshire (£5 million)

Exeter City Council (£5 million)

Ipswich Borough Council (£5 million)

Oxfordshire County Council (£5 million)

Wokingham Borough Council (£5 million)

Oxford City Council (£4.5 million)

Colchester Borough Council (£4 million)

East Lindsey District Council (£4 million)

East Staffordshire Borough Council (£4 million)

South Oxfordshire District Council (£2.5 million)

Great Yarmouth (£2 million)

Hertsmere Borough Council (£1 million)

Kirklees Council (£1 million)

Vale of White Horse District Council (£1 million)

Winchester (£1 million)

Amounts for Bracknell Forest, Burnley Council, Chorley Council, North Ayshire, Surrey County Council and Wychavon District Council are all to be confirmed.

Sussex Police Authority (£6.8 million)

Hertfordshire Police Authority (£3 million)

Gwent Police Authority (£1 million)

Rushmoor Borough Council confirmed it had a total of £2 million invested in Glitnir.

Winchester City Council said it had £1 million invested in Heritable Bank. Council leader George Beckett said: “The council supports the representations by the Local Government Association to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to protect the interests of council tax payers.”

The following local authorities have confirmed they have no money invested in the affected banks:

Brighton and Hove City Council.

East Sussex Council.

London Borough of Merton.

Forest of Dean District Council.

Among the public bodies with about a billion pounds invested in Icelandic banks are police authorities, which stand to lose nearly £100 million.

Here is a list of the police authorities known to be affected and their investments:

Dorset £7 million

Dyfed-Powys £2 million

Gwent £1 million

Hertfordshire £3 million

Humberside £5.75 million

Kent £11.1 million

Lancashire £0.67 million

Metropolitan £30 million

Northumbria £3.5 million

South Wales £7 million

Surrey £1.5 million

Sussex £6.8 million

Thames Valley £5 million

West Midlands £5.4 million

West Yorkshire £6 million

Transport for London invested £40m.

British charities meanwhile could lose tens of millions of pounds.

Here is a list of some of the charities affected:

Naomi House children’s hospice in Sutton Scotney, near Winchester, has £5.7 million of deposits invested with Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander, which has gone into administration.

The Physiological Society in London has £523,000 invested with the same bank.

Samaritans have links to KSF because it is the parent company of Investment Managers, which looks after the charity’s investment portfolio.

[…] huge projected savings. They might cover up the hole caused by the slightly dodgy and high risk Icelandic investment portfolio of recent years. I suspect that this will be kept off the annual performance process interview […]